DECONSTRUCTIVISM

As used in literary criticism, philosophy, and more recently, legal studies, it focuses on the inherent,
internal contradictions in language and interpretation. As formulated by the French thinker Jacques
Derrida, deconstruction is a fundamental critique of certain intellectual assumptions that underlie
Western thinking. According to Derrida, Western thought and culture have been organized around
unacknowledged presuppositions—“centers”—that both structure and restrict meaning. These centers
appear as self-evident truths that lie outside the system of language. One example might be “the human
spirit,” a phrase that implies the existence of transcendent reality, as do such terms as “God” or
“consciousness,” that forms the basis of meaning. Derrida calls this belief LOGOCENTRISM, the
assumption of an ultimate ground or referent for language.
Against the logocentric conception Derrida argues that meaning is not generated by some extralinguistic
presence, but by absence—that is, by the differences between one word and another. Thus it is
difference (not the traditional “identity” of the word and its object) that distinguishes language. In other
words, language is rooted not in a positive relation of words to the world but instead in a relation of
differences of one element to the other. Language does not reveal things as they are; it imposes
categories on the world. Meaning is a function of the fact that our pictures of reality are the products of
these linguistically derived categories.
In America in the 1970s these ideas were taken up and applied to literature by the “Yale critics”: Paul De
Man, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman, and, at one time on the periphery of the group, Harold Bloom.
Adapting and applying some of Derrida’s ideas, they helped to create an atmosphere in which
deconstruction became the center of an intense controversy. In general the American deconstructionist
movement is not a theory but a method—partly philosophical, partly literary—of reading texts. In this
respect, as in others, deconstruction is directLY opposed to STRUCTURALISM, which attempts to
discover the underlying grammar of literature. The deconstructive method zeroes in on a specific text,
much in the manner of the “close reading” approach that characterized NEW CRITICISM. But
deconstructionists aim, in Hartman’s words, “to see through literary forms to the way language . . .
makes or breaks meaning.”
Central to this method is Derrida’s concept of différance, a word he coins to distinguish it from simple
différence (difference). Derrida employs the word in both senses of the French verb différer, which
means both to differ and to defer. The sense of “differ” in the term refers to Saussure’s view that the
meaning of words is a function of differences and that these differences are “negative,” that is,
distinguished by what they are not. The sense of defer applies to the belief that meaning is never really
present but always deferred because the “meaning” is simply more words leading to a cycle of words
about words. Operating from this principle, deconstructionists scrutinize the contradictory elements in a
text until they reach an APORIA (an impasse), the point at which the text’s contradictory meanings are
shown to be irreconcilable. Thus the text is revealed as a house divided against itself, which cannot
stand close scrutiny. The result is an illustration of the indeterminacy of meaning.
Attacked as an irresponsible game, a denial of common sense, or empty nihilism, deconstruction—in the
narrower sense of a critical school—appears to be on the wane. Its decline has been hastened by the
revelation that its chief American practitioner, Paul De Man, had written some 200 articles for two pro-
Nazi newspapers during the German occupation of Belgium in World War II. As a result, some critics of
deconstruction have made efforts to link deconstructive criticism to totalitarian thought. But despite its
decline, many of deconstruction’s ideas—particularly those related to the “decentering” of the subject
and the
rejection of the idea of a single meaning—have been incorporated into the main-
stream of academic critical thinking. The question of whether that influence will
spread outside the universities into the world of general readers remains open As used in literary
criticism, philosophy, and more recently, legal
studies, it focuses on the inherent, internal contradictions in language and inter-
pretation. As formulated by the French thinker Jacques Derrida, deconstruc-
tion is a fundamental critique of certain intellectual assumptions that underlie
Western thinking. According to Derrida, Western thought and culture have
been organized around unacknowledged presuppositions—“centers”—that both
structure and restrict meaning. These centers appear as self-evident truths that
lie outside the system of language. One example might be “the human spirit,”
a phrase that implies the existence of transcendent reality, as do such terms as
“God” or “consciousness,” that forms the basis of meaning. Derrida calls this belief
LOGOCENTRISM, the assumption of an ultimate ground or referent for language.
Against the logocentric conception Derrida argues that meaning is not
generated by some extralinguistic presence, but by absence—that is, by the dif-
ferences between one word and another. Thus it is difference (not the traditional
“identity” of the word and its object) that distinguishes language. In other words,
language is rooted not in a positive relation of words to the world but instead in
a relation of differences of one element to the other. Language does not reveal
things as they are; it imposes categories on the world. Meaning is a function of
the fact that our pictures of reality are the products of these linguistically derived
categories.
In America in the 1970s these ideas were taken up and applied to literature
by the “Yale critics”: Paul De Man, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman, and, at one
time on the periphery of the group, Harold Bloom. Adapting and applying some
of Derrida’s ideas, they helped to create an atmosphere in which deconstruction
became the center of an intense controversy. In general the American decon-
structionist movement is not a theory but a method—partly philosophical, partly
literary—of reading texts. In this respect, as in others, deconstruction is directly
DECENTER
110
opposed to STRUCTURALISM, which attempts to discover the underlying grammar
of literature. The deconstructive method zeroes in on a specific text, much in the
manner of the “close reading” approach that characterized NEW CRITICISM. But
deconstructionists aim, in Hartman’s words, “to see through literary forms to the
way language . . . makes or breaks meaning.”
Central to this method is Derrida’s concept of différance, a word he coins to
distinguish it from simple différence (difference). Derrida employs the word in
both senses of the French verb différer, which means both to differ and to defer.
The sense of “differ” in the term refers to Saussure’s view that the meaning of
words is a function of differences and that these differences are “negative,” that
is, distinguished by what they are not. The sense of defer applies to the belief that
meaning is never really present but always deferred because the “meaning” is
simply more words leading to a cycle of words about words. Operating from this
principle, deconstructionists scrutinize the contradictory elements in a text until
they reach an APORIA (an impasse), the point at which the text’s contradictory
meanings are shown to be irreconcilable. Thus the text is revealed as a house
divided against itself, which cannot stand close scrutiny. The result is an illustra-
tion of the indeterminacy of meaning.
Attacked as an irresponsible game, a denial of common sense, or empty
nihilism, deconstruction—in the narrower sense of a critical school—appears
to be on the wane. Its decline has been hastened by the revelation that its chief
American practitioner, Paul De Man, had written some 200 articles for two pro-
Nazi newspapers during the German occupation of Belgium in World War II. As
a result, some critics of deconstruction have made efforts to link deconstructive
criticism to totalitarian thought. But despite its decline, many of deconstruction’s
ideas—particularly those related to the “decentering” of the subject and the
rejection of the idea of a single meaning—have been incorporated into the main-
stream of academic critical thinking. The question of whether that influence will
spread outside the universities into the world of general readers remains open

***Deconstruction Refers to a philosophical activity initiated by JacquesMDerrida in France; the first

major publications appeared in the late 1960s. It is a critique of concepts and hierarchies which,
according to Derrida, are essential to traditional criteria of certainty, identity and truth; but which,
nevertheless, achieve their status only by repressing and forgetting other elements which thus become
the un-thought, and sometimes the unthinkable, of Western philosophy.
Derrida, following Nietzsche and
Heidegger, tries to expose and explain
this partiality, which he calls ‘logocen-
trism’. Both aspects of this name – the
fact of being centred, and of the logos as
centre – are significant.
The logos casts a long shadow: a
whole series of preferences is seen to
derive, nostalgically, from its value judge-
ments. Speech, as unmediated expression,
is privileged in relation to writing, which
appears as a suspect supplement to the
authenticity of utterance – a distinction
already evident in Greek thought. A
desire for self-sufficiency, for the unquali-
fied and unmediated, shows itself in
attitudes to meaning, in the search for
absolute knowledge, original truth, or
determinate signification; and in attitudes
to existence, in the search for unified
being or a self-knowing reflexive con-
sciousness. It is as if the urge of every entity – signified or existent – is to be present to itself in a way
that makes it self-confirming and self-sufficient.
‘Presence’ is thus a prime value for logo-
centrism, which itself forms ‘the matrix of
every idealism’. And the various systems
which function as ‘centrisms’ of whatever
kind are attempts to delimit realms of
security in which the proliferating play of
meaning is closed by the presence of a
centre as guarantor of signification.
Derrida’s approach to these desires is
sceptical; but simply to equate decon-
struction and scepticism is to miss the
point. The critique of logocentrism or of
a metaphysics of presence cannot take
place from a privileged position outside
the traditions it questions, for there is no
such outside; the traces are too deep in
language and thought. But just because
ideal logocentrism is never actually
achieved, the language will also carry
traces of its repressed other, of the
un-thought. And hence Derrida’s philoso-
phical practice involves a close textual
criticism in order to trace the contradic-
tion that shadows the text’s coherence and
‘expresses the force of a desire’. This
undermining from within is the first stage
of deconstruction, and usually subverts a
privileged term: thus ‘nature’ is shown as
always already contaminated by ‘culture’,
‘speech’ by ‘writing’, and so on. Writing
(écriture), necessarily caught up in the
play of signification, takes the place of
pure speech as a norm for language. But
Derrida is not concerned with simple
binary reversals of value, which would
merely offer another centred structure. He
therefore releases his ‘undecideables’,
radically unstable terms which act to
disrupt systematization. The most impor-
tant of these is ‘differance’, a coinage
which plays on two meanings of the
French différer: difference – between
signs as the basis of signification and deferment – deferment of
presence by the sign which always refers
to another sign, not to the thing itself.
Derrida’s ‘mis-spelling’ cannot be heard
in French pronunciation; it exists only as
written, emphasizing writing and textual-
ity at the expense of speech. And so that
‘differance’ cannot be recuperated as a
centre, he insists that it is neither word,
concept nor origin: at most, a condition of
the possibility of meaning, which resists
hypostatization. The artifice and even frivolity of its neologism act to prevent it
being taken as a master key to any structure. Indeed, the use of neologisms, puns
and etymologies, as well as individually
opaque styles, is common among decon-
structive writers.
As we have seen, the power of
logocentrism is not total. Certain texts
appear ‘to mark and to organize a struc-
ture of resistance to the philosophical
conceptuality that allegedly dominated or
comprehended them’. There is a distinc-
tion between this latter group and those
texts that simply contain an inherent contra-
diction or aporia. The aporia is a built-in
deconstruction, as it were; but the ‘resis-
tant’ texts go further and begin their own
critique. They include (only in part) the
writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger,
Freud and Saussure. They also include
some ‘literary’ texts – Derrida distrusts
the category, but finds in Artaud,
Mallarmé and others ‘the demonstration
and practical deconstruction of the
representation of what was done with
literature’.
The relevance to literary studies, then,
is not through a critical method (which is
not on offer as such) nor in the finality of
given interpretations (there are no final
interpretations) but in the theoretical and
conceptual insights of deconstruction.
There are specific points at which
Derrida’s argument overlaps with more
narrow literary concerns: the treatment of
nature in Rousseau, for example (Of
Grammatology, 1967, trans. 1976); or
the treatment of mimesis in Mallarmé
(Dissemination, 1972, trans. 1981). A
great deal of modern writing has turned
around problems of representation and
consciousness, and these are extensively
discussed by Derrida through his critical
involvement with phenomenology,
semiotics and psychoanalysis. Many crit-
ical issues are open to a deconstructive
approach; thus the concern with authors
evinces a desire for origin, to serve as
interpretive closure; and realist represen-
tation is precisely an illusion of presence.
In general, Derrida’s way of thinking
radically revises what a reader expects to
do with a text.
The specific use of deconstruction in
literary argument grew in the United
States, following pioneer work by Paul
de Man and J. Hillis Miller at Yale. There is
a dubious tendency in de Man to privilege
literature in general as a self-deconstructing
discourse; but this does not destroy the
brilliance of individual readings which, in
their aporetic ensemble, make the text
‘unreadable’ in terms of closure
(Allegories of Reading, 1979). Similarly,
Hillis Miller argues that ‘The fault of
premature closure is intrinsic to criticism’
(Fiction and Repetition, 1982). Besides
generating new readings, mainly of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century material,
American deconstruction has enlivened
debate about critical principles. The
refusal of final meaning caused a certain
institutional anxiety about anarchic
individualism – understandably so,
perhaps, in view of the polemical man-
nerism of deconstructionist style for those
who do not enjoy it. But the absence of
absolute criteria for interpretation does
not mean total freedom; it is precisely the
pressure of pre-existent discourse that
deconstruction re-marks in its critique of
origin. In a recent interview, Derrida says
that ‘Meaning . . . does not depend on the
subjective identity but on the field of
different forces, which produce interpre-
tations’ (The Literary Review 14, 1980,
p. 21).
Deconstruction, as a set of popular
clichés, soon palls. Simply to demonstrate
50 Deconstruction
logocentrism becomes a tautologous
exercise. But the major examples of
deconstructive practice retain their power.
Few theoretical approaches have
combined such challenging abstraction
with such intense textual work. Not the
least of its values lies in the learning and
wit of its principal practitioners. ‘To write
on their plan, it was at least necessary to
read and think.’ See also DISCOURSE, POST-
STRUCTURALISM, DIFFERENCE, PSYCHOLOGY
AND PSYCHOANALYSIS